Snapshots of Urban Growth and Change in 4 Neighborhoods

I spend a lot of time on Google Maps. Like, a LOT of time on Google Maps. One of the more thought-provoking features on Google Maps is Google Street View, and boy, do I spend a lot of time on Street View. On Google Earth, it’s easy to spot new apartment buildings, but the scale can be lost; from above, sidewalk improvements, new rooflines, and the street-wall is an abstract notion. At ground level, you better understand what it would feel like to actually live and work in a space. Of course, in Street View, as internet savvy people know, you can select older dates when the Google Street View service last drove down a street. Doing so results in powerful and immediate illustrations of urban growth, change, and revitalization in Denver. Several Denver neighborhoods have gone through that kind of abrupt change in character in the last decade, so abrupt that you can illustrate the change by focusing on individual intersection. Midway through the 2020s, at the tail end of a boom in apartment construction in Denver, we thought it would be fun to name the biggest changes.

For high-level comparisons, we’re using Google Earth pictures from 2014 to now, but I encourage you to click on the links to the Street View captured from the past and to scroll through and “drive” around the past yourself.

37th Avenue and Downing, 2017 to now

This is the comparison that got me started on this project. Along with the many notable residential developments, there have also been infrastructure changes to this segment of street. Downing Street used to be a one-way street heading south through this stretch while north-bound traffic swung out along Lawrence Street to get to Marion, then north to Blake Street. In 2021, the city removed the one-block stretch of Lawrence Street and transformed Downing and Marion into two-way collector streets. At 37th and Downing, they bulbed out the curb to slow traffic and make orthogonal intersections where Downing encounters 36th Street and Larimer Street. And did I mention the incredible amount of residential and office construction in RiNo, the thousands of new residents and new jobs within a mile of this spot? Hard to summarize, but easy to see.

10th and Bannock Street, 2014 to now

Bannock Street is really booming right now, as any Downtown resident knows. Several residential high rises were recently completed with more still under construction. Seen from 10th and Bannock in particular, a few developments more could break ground in the medium-term future, including several towers at Bannock and 12th as well as a final development shepherded by SAR architects at the northeast corner of 9th and Bannock which would complete the redevelopment of a full city bloc, all designed by the firm. Looking at 2014, the only building on the street that’s recognizable is the adaptive re-use of the commercial building at 1001 Bannock. With an additional floor and renovated basement, it’s now used as a shared office workspace. In fact, the only thing that’s exactly the same as it was in 2014 is the unprotected bike lane along both sides of Bannock. 10 years ago the Golden Triangle neighborhood plan recommended that the bike facilities be upgraded or even brought to sidewalk level with a major enhancement of the pedestrian realm. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another decade to get that done.

16th and Raleigh, 2014 to now

It might be cheating to look down the barrel of a large urban redevelopment area and remark “What a change!” but in the case of the St. Anthony’s Hospital campus demolition, re-use, and redevelopment in West Colfax, the change really densified the core of the neighborhood. A vibrant pedestrian experience with ground-floor retail now lures park users just south of Sloan’s Lake Park. The redevelopment also created a new community gathering place by the old chapel just off Conejos Avenue and Stuart Street. The Alamo Drafthouse and retail plaza was an excellent investment, concurrent with the St. Anthony’s redevelopment. Denver Metro Village expanded along Raleigh Street by developing a surface parking lot (yay!) into a parking garage with a couple homes and retail spaces strapped on (oh.) And even the old office building at the SW corner of the intersection got involved, renovating its ground floor to add a plaza with retail. Up and down Colfax in either direction, the new vibrant center of the neighborhood has catalyzed further development.

13th and Osceola, 2014 to 2022

Ok, can you tell that I used to live in West Colfax and know the neighborhood well? The scale of the densification happening here is of a magnitude less than our other examples, but it is an incredibly fast pace of townhouse development along the southern part of West Colfax that brought the neighborhood from sloped roofs distant from each other to a series of roof-decks all touching. It’s true that the character of this part of the neighborhood has changed. Yep, that’s how growth works sometimes. But with new rapid transit, new sidewalks, new jobs, more neighbors, and more homes for future generations, West Colfax is booming in the right way.